Living like Missionaries

Today is a special day. Special and sad. A little bit. Isn't every day? That's just personal to me, I guess. It's my own life. Today, we are... Come on up here. We're celebrating Brittany Smith, everybody! Executive Pastor extraordinaire! Today is a great day because we get to celebrate Brittany and the... Are we gonna cry again? Let's find out. And all like the hard work she's done over the past six to seven years, something like that, right?

As on staff here at church. And man, she's just done so much. I mean, especially during this time of COVID, just to keep the church going and her faithfulness and her whole family, like just serving and just being diligent and awesome.

Like it's such a great thing. But today is the day, April 7th, the last day of your tenure on staff, but not of your involvement in i90 which we're happy to so it's happy because we're still going to see you on sundays but you can just be like not my problem so that's happy for you right um so hey guys we first of all let's just thanks britney we've got we've got some flowers which she loves she loves flowers i'm sure yes molly and i went to pick out this and she thought this vase felt

most like like Brittany. Yeah, there you go. So yeah. So man, we're just so thankful for you, Britt. And I know I speak literally for everyone in this room when we just say like, as a church, as a community, we're thankful for you and couldn't have done it without you. The grace of God within you, of course, you know, but you stepped up and you've taken responsibility and you've done difficult things, especially when they were very difficult.

Only a few difficult things. So this this a global pandemic, pastoral transition all at once. Yeah, that's great. So we're so thankful for her. So everybody, let's just pray for Brittany once again, like as she steps into a new stage of life. If you guys, some of you guys want to come up, that's fine. If not, just like extend your hand out. We are calling the blessings of God down upon her. We're coming as a church and just thankful for her. And we're just going to

bless her together. So Lord, that's it. That's all we're doing. We're saying, Lord, would you bless your faithful servant who's just done so so much. God, as she steps into this new place to just spend time with her family and with her kids and to, I'm sure she'll come up with some project along the way, Lord. But Lord, just, just, she's going to walk with you in the middle of that. So Holy Spirit, I pray you'd be so present with her. I pray,

Lord, you would just be close and encouraging to her. Lord, that you would just walk with her. Lord, that you would just go before her, even in her quiet time. Or would you be so—sorry, I don't mean to prophesy. You're going to be great. The Lord is going to be with you. But, Lord, would you be so present and close with her, Lord? Would you just minister to her as she's just figuring out what this next stage of her life is going to be like, Lord?

We are thankful for her. We love her, Lord. We bless her in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks, friend. Yeah. And Savannah is going to come up and take it over. Yeah, there we go. Good morning. So we have a few announcements. I don't know which one's the first on there, if it doesn't matter. So the first one, kids are not dismissed yet. No. So the first one will be we are doing a bake sale at April 21st for our youth that are going on a missions trip.

We're doing a local missions trip this year just to Tacoma, but it will be for a week. And so we're doing it to raise funds for the youth. So just be here and we're going to have yummy treats available. So just come support the kids and have fun eating all the yummy treats we're going to bake. And then the next one is Mops. We have three left and it has been growing. But with that, because it's been growing, we need help. help. And so we're asking if anyone's available.

It's what are the Wednesdays, the dates? The 17th will be the next one. And it's just the first and the third of every month. And then, yeah, we have three left. And so we're just asking from 930 into like 1130, just some help to watch the kids, have fun with them, play with them, do crafts, lots of Play-Doh. But yeah, we just to keep the ratios good and everyone having fun and safe in there, we just need more help. So if you're available, we would love to have you.

And then with that, kids can now be dismissed and everyone else can get some coffee. Music.

It's late. Hi, everybody. I had the Easter message up here, so we weren't going to do that again. So I've got to get the right message. Oh, boy. I'm excited to be with you all. Especially excited for those in the back. You know, hello. Can you hear me? No, no. It's okay. You know, guys, it is April break. And I thought we were going to have a lot of people traveling this weekend. We have. But you guys, you guys are in it. Most of you guys probably don't have kids in the school system,

so you're like, whatever. Every day is April break. Whole April. It's good. I'm so excited to be with you all today. Yeah, the first week of April break. And to our friends tuning in online, thank you for being here. I pray that you're having a great time wherever you're at. Today is a little bit special. We're going to do things a little bit different. We've already done them a little bit differently.

But we're going to do things a little bit differently because we're changing the order of our service because what I'm going to do is today I'm going to give a short message. I promise. promise. I'm capable of such things. I'm going to give a short message, and then we're going to invite some of our friends, some friends of I-90s up who are serving as missionaries in a Muslim majority country.

I'm not going to tell you their names just yet, because our friends need to be careful about putting their personal information and where they're serving out online. So since we are currently live streaming, I'm not going to mention that. And that means that after my message, the message portion, which will be short, my short message portion, we're going to say goodbye to our friends tuning in online.

Sorry, guys, you chose the wrong day to miss because we don't want to put this section out on the internet where we are talking to our missionary friends from a country that doesn't really welcome missionary activity, right?

So what we're going to do is at that point, we will say goodbye on the live stream, and then we'll have them come up here, and we'll just talk a little bit, talk a little bit about missions, talk a little bit about the work that they're are doing and what it's like being a missionary. And since we're hosting some missionaries this morning, I thought it would be good to just spend a little bit of time thinking about mission, the idea of missions and mission and where that all comes from.

Mission or missionaries, you're probably familiar with that idea. That's an idea that's been around the church a long time. We talk about mission, we talk about missions, by which we usually mean international missions, missions, missionaries being sent out internationally to other places. We also talk about, we say the word a lot, have you heard this around the church. Missional living or being a missional church? The concept of mission is very interesting to Christians. It's important.

We believe that we're on a mission, but did you know, and I think this is kind of surprising when you think about it, the word mission that we use all the time, it's actually not in the Bible ever. That word is not in the Bible. Isn't that interesting? Now, I'm not saying that to cast any doubt on the legitimacy of missions, but I do think it's interesting.

It's interesting because I would argue that mission is such an important part of what we're called to do, and yet the Bible doesn't really talk about it that much, at least not in the way that we do, and that there's something interesting in that fact. And we'll talk about that as we go along here. You're probably familiar with what we call the Great Commission, and you think, oh, there's that word mission in there.

But that's something that we've created, a title for this, this title of Great Commission to it. We find what we typically call the Great Commission in Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20. It's Jesus's last words in the book of Matthew. He says to them, all authority, he's talking to his disciples now, all authority has has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I've commanded you. And remember, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. So these are words from Jesus, and what we think of is his commissioning of the church, his commissioning of the disciples, this movement of disciples that has gathered around him after his ascension into heaven, what they're called to do.

They're called and commissioned to be on mission to spread the gospel message into the whole world. It was William Carey, who is a late 1700s pastor and a missionary. He was essentially the father of the modern missions movement as we know it. For the longest time, the Western church didn't have this urgency about sending missionaries into foreign countries. And William Carey decided that that needed to be changed.

And so he was the one who coined this phrase, the Great Commission, and popularized it in Western culture. Because he noticed that throughout his time, the European church had just forgotten. They had forgotten their call to reach the nations. And so he went around reminding them of their commission. And he really had great influence. And he developed this huge movement to send people out to foreign nations to let people know about Jesus.

He said this little phrase, which I love, to know the will of God, we need to open the Bible and open a map. He just had this conviction that to be sent is to be a Christian, to be going out in the name of Jesus, spreading the gospel is what it means to be a Christian, and we ought to do so in an urgent way throughout the whole world. And so he considered his calling and really the calling of the church.

He called the church to lean into this, to look at the map of the world and look at all the places where there wasn't yet Bibles available, where the gospel wasn't going out, where there weren't yet churches established and to go, to actually send missionaries into those worlds because he knew and he believed that this was the will of God. And I think he's right because here's what I know about God. And I think we could all agree with this is that he is on mission.

God wants to see people in every place come to faith in Jesus Christ. That is not for God some minor point. It's the big thing. It's the whole goal, I would say, of history, of revelation. It's the reason that Jesus came to be known, to make himself known and invite people to know him. The whole Bible, if you think about it, is about that. it's about mission.

So sending missionaries to the nations makes sense in light of God's goal to, through the church, bring the gospel out to all people in all places, because God cares about the whole world. But here's the thing, and I know you, and I think you know it, and I think we feel this tension a little bit in the United States. We also know that God cares about your neighborhood. He cares about your neighbors. He cares about the state of Washington, the greater Seattle area.

He He cares about Snoqualmie and Issaquah or wherever it is that you call home. He cares about India and China and Africa. He cares about everywhere. He cares about all people. And of course, I mean, the church has known that over the last few decades, right? Right. As the United States has really, up through the early 2000s, been like just a missions powerhouse in the world. We've sent out missionaries all over the place to propagate the gospel.

There has been also a movement within the church that we call the missional church movement. And as the United States has become a less Christian place, a more secular place, particularly in urban cities like Seattle, Seattle. There's been a greater movement to consider the call to reach our own people and our own nation, right?

And there's been a missional church movement that aims to reach people who are immersed in secular environments who are not being effectively reached by the way the church has approached local missions for a long time. So there's a missional church movement that comes up that's trying to go out of churches and out of a Christian kind of bubble and get into normal people's lives.

Because God is on a mission to reach the world. He's reaching the furthest places, and yet he's also reaching in our communities. But if you're like me, you kind of like grew up around this, and you know these two things. God cares about the world. He also cares about my neighborhood. It leaves you asking the question like, well, what do I do about that? How do I I respond to that reality, the reality of God's mission. Do you just like pick which one you prefer?

Do you specialize and just like ignore another? I mean, like if the word mission isn't even in the Bible, like how do we think about mission? And what is my responsibility? What is your responsibility as a Christian? And how do you do it? How do you live on mission? Or how do you support missions? Right? And here's what I think, and it's my one of two points I'm going to make this morning. Here's what I think, and then I'm going to explain it to you.

What you need to do and what I need to do is we don't need to do mission. We need to live in God's story. Because if what is happening is that God is reaching the world, then we're a part of that. And we just need to like live in that story. Mission is not a word in the Bible, but mission is, I would argue, it's the core of the the Bible, especially of the New Testament. The preacher I. Howard Marshall says this about the New Testament. I think this is really fascinating.

He says, this is how we should think of the New Testament. And I would say it's probably true of all of scripture. He says, it may be more helpful to recognize them, the scriptures, more specifically. As documents of mission. They show how the church should be shaped for its mission, and they deal with those problems that form obstacles in the the advancement of mission.

What Marshall is saying is that what we have bound in this book, it's a series of documents that are just coming out of the mission. They're coming out of the story of God to bring the gospel forward into all nations, and they're more reflective. And if we read into them, we would see that the mission is at the core of those things. He's saying that the New Testament scriptures are less about telling us to go on mission as they are the product of of mission.

They are an example of what happens when people sit down and decide, no, I understand what God has called me to. I understand that God is on a mission to reach people. And this is the product of them. For Paul, who wrote the majority of the New Testament, right? Mission wasn't a part of the church's vocation. It wasn't some little thing that they needed to do. It was the whole thing. The church exists for mission.

The church is living mission because God's work in the world is about reaching the world. Everything in the New Testament and the whole Bible is the product of mission, I would argue. It's not a rule book. It's a mission book. It's a set of mission documents. It is the story of God reaching the world and what he's going to do and what he calls us to be a part of. I'm teaching through a little book by a theologian named Christopher J.H.

Wright right now, and it's about the Bible and missional theology. And in this book, he describes a transformation that took place in his own thinking about mission and about the Bible. He says this, it's been a transformation from knowing lots of the Bible's content to seeing myself as living within the Bible's story. That's what we're talking about. The Bible has moved from being an object of my appreciation and study to being the subject of the life I live.

The Bible is not not so much something I think about as it is something I think with. It is not so much that I try to apply the Bible to my life as if my life were the center to which the Bible has some adjectival relevance. Rather, I need to apply my life to the Bible. That is to inhabit the story from within. You get the difference between applying the Bible to my life and applying my my life to the Bible.

It's about what you're framing, right? And what Wright is describing is a simple, I think, but challenging thing. He's describing a different way to think about my life in the context of what is revealed in Scripture, in light of God's mission in the world. And he argues that we ought to apply the Bible to our life. And I think just like asking different questions is kind of how we get to that point.

So I have like a question that we should stop asking. It's don't ask how the Bible and mission fit into my life. I think this is implied, but ask how does my life fit into the mission, into missions, how to, into the Bible. I want you actually to think about that for a second. And maybe it puzzles you, okay? Because I get that this is sort of a challenging way to think about it. But I think this is a powerful question. Because if we start to think, well, how does my life fit in the Bible?

Then we become, what happens is that that thinking helps us straighten some of our priorities out. And it helps us get past this, how do I, these hangups that we have about, how do I do and what is enough in terms of my being devoted to mission And does everyone have to go abroad or does everyone have to just like go to secular people and do I have to go stand on the street corner and evangelize all the time?

You know, because when we think about how do I apply the Bible and mission to my life, and I'm thinking about all the things that I can do, but if I understand instead that actually I'm just a part of a story of God's initiative and God's mission in the world, I think it begins to change my thinking about who I am and what I am and what it gives me is a new sense of purpose. This type of thinking can give you a sense of purpose that you maybe didn't have before. And it can free you.

See, the difference in seeing the biblical call to mission as something that we do, the difference is seeing the biblical call to worship as something that we do, as opposed to something that God is doing that I can be a part of. And this is it. I think the Bible, the thing that we need to do to take away from the Bible is to recognize that God is at work in the world. He's reconciling all things to himself. off. He's inviting people to know him, and we're a part of that.

And so our whole life can be just about knowing God and then just letting other people know about what he's done. We get to partner with God in his mission. We get to be a part of his story. And so, you know, we could get down to the particularity of calling, and we're going to talk with our friends. I almost said their names, our friends, about what that looks like and what international missions could look look like and how you get called into that. But here's the thing.

My hope is that this kind of thinking will actually take the pressure off of you. And instead actually gets you excited about what it could really look like to be someone who's effectively on mission, who just sees God working every day in your life, who understands that like the people that you run into aren't there by chance. They're there as people that you can just like share with and share life with because you know God is calling the people around you to know him because that's

what he's doing. He's been doing it throughout history. He's doing it all all places, among all people. He's revealing himself and he's inviting us to know him and people to know him. And so when we understand that, that this is God's mission, he's doing it and we just get to be a part of it. It doesn't rest upon your shoulders anymore. And how many things are you just like sick? How many burdens are you sick of carrying? I'm like so tired of having more things to do.

And I've got four kids and a lot going on in my life right now. And I just like, I like almost daily, I think I can't, I can't do anything more. Like, please don't give me another task. You know, anybody else? Just me? No. Okay. This is my group therapy session. But you know what? When I understand this, when I really come to understand deeply that even, even in my role as a pastor, like this is God's mission. It's God's church. It's God's work. And I just, I just have to be showing up.

That's my role. I just have to be a part of the story. I have to look for him working. That's all I have to do. That's so freeing. Oh, okay. I thought that was going to be the alarm, but it's an Amber Alert or something. Okay. I was like, what is it about? Oh, mine's going off too. Okay. Oh, is that me? Yep. Does anyone see a 2005 Kia Spectra? Does anyone? I don't see one at the moment. Okay. You know what? Let's pray for this. Let's pray for this real quick because it's,

you know, it's a serious thing. I don't mean to joke about it. Okay, Lord. So yeah, so there's this alert that we're all getting on our phones. God, you care about children. You care about hurting people, Lord. Lord, would you just bring this child to safety quickly, Lord, wherever, you know, the police are looking or intervening, Lord. Would it even be like a non-thing, Lord? Would you just find this child and bring them back safely even right now, we pray. Amen.

You know, this is actually a good illustration. I didn't plan this Amber Alert. I don't have that power, right? Because here's the thing. If we think everything depends on us, we're going to leave church right now and go and find this Kia Spectra somewhere in the state of Washington, right?

We put on a task, but if we understand, okay, we're just a part of what God is doing, and what we can do is because God cares about people, He cares about the gospel, he cares about people knowing him, is that we can, like, when we see signs and urgency, what we can do is go urgently before God in prayer and do what we can and not, like, kind of putting everything, all the whole weight of the world on your shoulders.

You know, there's freedom in just walking with God. There's freedom in walking with God.

There's freedom in letting him put things in front of you and just saying, okay, God, I know what your heart is. I know what your character is. I know you love people. And so I'm just going to be here. I'm going to be a part of this story. And then when you bring me someplace else, like, to depend on God is such a freeing thing. We get to partner with God. I love how Peter describes it in 1 Peter.

He says this about who we are. He says, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you're God's people. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. What Peter kind of describes our identity and our story is this. We were once nothing, and now we're something.

We weren't distinct or called out or a part of God's life, but now we are. We were once not a people, now we're God's people. We had not received mercy, but now we've received mercy. Because what Peter's understanding is the gospel is the good news that God is at work in the world. He's saving. He's calling. He's raising people up. And we just get to be a part of that. And this is like such a fundamental way that Peter is just describing.

What Peter is doing is he's giving them an identity, a sense of who they are. You are not what you do. Isn't that such a freeing thing? You are not how great of an evangelist you are. Your value does not hinge upon what type of gift or calling you have. Your story, your identity, the story that you live in is this. You were once not a people, but now you're God's people. You had not received mercy, but now you've received mercy. We are people who are caught up in the mission of God.

That's what the church is. Just people who recognize God called me out from nowhere. He's dealt with my sin and he's given me a purpose and some joy in life. I can walk by his grace now. And so what do we do? How do we apply this? How do we live into the story? And I think it's really as simple as this. It's like he says here, we've had all this done so so that we could proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

You know what? You do have to do something like, just because you have to live out your identity, right? But it's a simple thing. You just have to open your mouth. You just have to open your mouth. You don't have to open your mouth with, according to your gifting, like you don't have to have a great script memorized to tell people about Jesus. You could, that might be helpful. Sometimes it's helpful to have the tools available to walk people through what the gospel is.

You absolutely need to do that. But I think that at least as Peter sees it, the foundational thing that we're called to is just to be people who proclaim the praises of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Mission, I think, can be that simple. But the thing is, we need to be people who are willing to praise God publicly and open our mouths and talk about what he's done.

That requires very little skill on your part, right? It's simply, Simply, it involves the ability to speak, which I think almost everyone here has. Or everyone. And it involves a willingness to go and just talk about what God is doing. To just talk about what God is doing. And I honestly, I think I look at my own life, right? And how unwilling I am sometimes to just talk about God, to talk about Jesus, to talk about what he's done in my life.

Because I feel like, oh, maybe that's being pushy, or maybe that's like pushing religion. It's going to make people feel awkward. Can I just ask, why? Why should should that make anyone feel awkward? I think it probably just makes me feel awkward. And I should just get over that. There's ways for me to deal with that. You know, there's ways for me to deal with that. And I think it's this, I need to just take on this identity that I'm called to.

So my one like little takeaway is that you need to, and I need to learn to just open my mouth and say what's true. That is, if I've experienced God's grace and his love, then I need to talk about it.

Psalm 107 we sang this song this morning a song well derived from this song it says this give thanks to the lord for he is good his faithful love endures forever let the redeemed of the lord proclaim that he has redeemed them from the power of the foe and has gathered them from the lands from the east and the west from the north and the south some wandered in the desolate wilderness wilderness, finding no way to a city where they could live. They were hungry and thirsty.

Their spirits failed within them. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he rescued them from their distress. He led them by the right path to go to a city where they could live. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his faithful love and his wondrous works for all of humanity, for he has satisfied the thirsty and filled the hungry with good things. You might not feel smart enough to convince people and to deal with all their

arguments and stuff like that. And that's okay. That's not your burden to bear. You might not feel like you're eloquent. You might not feel even such a great confidence that you can share something with people. You might feel nervous about entering into people's lives and feeling pushy about it. But let me just say, we are as redeemed people called to say so.

To say so. That means if you've been redeemed, if God has shown up in your life, if he's cared for you, if you've recognized them, that he's on mission and you are the object of his love and affection in Jesus Christ, and he's set you in a good place and he's given you a good place to live, then you need to say so. You need to talk about that. And it's like, you're the only obstacle to that. Really.

It's hard to admit, but we are generally the only obstacle to our willingness this, to talk about Jesus. And I just want to encourage you guys to do that, to be people who open your mouths.

So with that in mind, we're going to talk to some people who have really just given so much to serve the Lord. I actually just said something I don't like, so I'll apologize on their behalf. Some people look at me and say, oh, you just give so much. And it's like.